Talk:にて

에서, にて

My Google-fu is shit so I haven't found a discussion on this yet. There has to be one.

(What on Earth is the relationship between Japanese and Korean? I hate this so much.) —Suzukaze-c (talk) 07:48, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

There's so much politicking around this question that it's hard to discern the actual linguistics from the nationalism.

Alexander Vovin is one of the more stringent linguists who's explored this issue. I believe his earlier writings (which I haven't read myself) argued for a relationship, his more recent stuff (some of which I have read) argues against one. That said, what he specifically says is that there isn't enough evidence to make the case for a relationship. I think some of what happened is he became disillusioned with other writers who were "lumpers" (focused on similarities), but who were notably sloppy in their research: see his criticism of Robbeets, one such "lumper", as I excerpted at [[Talk:しか#Derivation]].

However, as I also remarked at [[User_talk:Eirikr#Sources_to_be_trusted]], Vovin's insistence that the similarities between Korean and Japanese are purely due to being neighbors and influencing each other doesn't make sense -- otherwise, Korean and Chinese would be much more similar than they are. Korean and Chinese grammar have very little resemblance. Whereas, as you notice, Korean and Japanese are so close grammatically in some areas that the amount of overlap is nearly ridiculous. One-to-one translation between the two languages, right down to analogous grammatical construction, is possible in some cases.

I do take Vovin's position to heart, that any argument for Korean and Japanese relatedness must be rigorous and exhibit clear, predictive, and repeatable rules for correspondence. We (the world at large) don't have that yet. But as communication gets easier and fewer of us are working in a vacuum, and thus less liable to get lost, I think the scholarship is gradually clearing away cruft (like Robbeets's and Starostin's mistakes) and ferreting out cognates and principles that actually stand up to scrutiny.

One such potential thread is in a 2000 paper I recently ran across by Unger, another usually-decent writer in this space, Reconciling Comparative and Internal Reconstruction: The Case of Old Japanese /ti, ri, ni/, wherein he suggests a solution to the 露出形・被覆形 oddities in specific Japonic nouns -- namely, that there may have been a protoform ending in /-ri/, where this final element contracted in compounds -- yielding the 被覆形 like 酒 (saka-) or 神 (kamu-), or persisted in standalone noun usage but lost the medial /-r-/ and then underwent vowel fusion to yield the 露出形 like 酒 (sake) or 神 (kami). Unger points to possible Korean cognates, such as 다리 (dari, “leg”) for Japanese 手 (ta, te, “hand”), or 머리 (meori, “head”) for Japanese 目 (ma, me, “eye”). The semantics are a bit messy, but depending on time depth, words do move around in sometimes surprising ways -- consider English nice and the ways the meaning has changed just in recorded history. If you're interested, it's available for free online reading on JSTOR (registration required, sadly downloads are only for-pay) at https://www.jstor.org/stable/417138. Ah, and it's also available on Academia.edu (registration also required), potentially for free download, at https://www.academia.edu/8065186/Reconciling_Comparative_and_Internal_Reconstruction_The_Case_of_Old_Japanese_ti_ri_ni_.

My personal take is that Korean and Japanese are ultimately siblings, although perhaps somewhere along the lines of third cousins twice removed -- I suspect that each has been subject to multiple different influences since their common ancestors parted ways. From what little I've read of research into languages of the Korean peninsula, it sounds like the northern and southern branches were already distinct when first mentioned in the histories. It seems to me a bit like we're looking at the last two members of what had been a very populous language branch at one point. We're missing all the in-between languages that made it easier to piece together Proto-Indo-European, for instance. And there's a lot less history -- as in, textual evidence for earlier stages. Japanese history only goes back to about the age of Old English and Beowulf, while most clearly Korean textual evidence doesn't show up for another 700 years until the 1400s.

Anyway, I hope the above is at least somewhat useful.  :) I find it fun to talk about this kind of stuff, and I don't view your comment as "ranting". Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:32, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Oo, forgot the ping: @Suzukaze-c! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:30, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hm, I didn't expect such a long answer! :P (Or any answer at all, really.)

Yes, I just find the morphological similarities so upsetting. Maybe someone will crack the case someday...

Do you know of any comparison between non-modern Korean and Japanese? (Or is it more difficult considering that Hangul was created only in the 1500s?) —Suzukaze-c (talk) 01:15, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I think I've read that there's some evidence in old hyangga, but anything before the invention of hangul in 1443 is spotty at best. Even just since then, there have been some sound shifts in Korean, so finding older forms can be helpful in discerning patterns of possible cognacy. There are apparently also records indicating pitch accent or tone in the Middle Korean of the 1400s-1500s, which would be fascinating to see if there are any clear correlations with Japanese terms.

Must run for now. Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:39, 21 July 2020 (UTC)